Rocky Mountain Club B5

Manual transmission with overdrive is the specs. where is my overdrive... it feels like i need to shift when i am driving about 60.. i am near at 3k plus rpms on the highway. curious if they all came with over drive. if so where is it located etc etc...

Your 5th gear is your overdrive more or less. Overdrive basically offers up some freewheel so you can get more speed with less effort and in turn better mpg.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdrive_(mechanics)

With manual transmissions as I understand it, it is just your typical gearing. Some auto trans had (have) buttons for toggling OD. For mountain driving you would not want OD. My 5sp UrS4 is at 3K at about 70mph.

When I had my 2.7T A6, it was a 6sp manual and that 6th gear was amazing, but it was totally an overdrive gear, worthless other than highway cruising. Hell, unless I was going on a long highway drive I rarely got into 6th gear. I think you'll notice that even though you can probably drop to 40 mph in 5th and still be able to accelerate on flat land there just isn't the pull you'd expect. Though your car is modified so it would behave different than stock.

In a day where many manuals are 6sp and Automatics are getting into the 7 an 8 gear range it seems like you got screwed with a 5sp, but you didn't.

Transmission technology has come a long way, we have gone from a time where those with manual transmissions had the advantage and the better gearing to a time where 0-60 times in a car such as a Passat are almost identical between the auto and the manual. In fact I think the tip in the b6 Passat is just a hare faster.